And yet, House Republicans do deserve some credit. Given the constraints put on Boehner and his deputy, Eric Cantor, by the most conservative members of the G.O.P. conference, they have navigated the last few months of fiscal politics more responsibly than many would have believed.

Recall that, after Election Day, things looked dire. Washington faced, in quick succession, automatic tax hikes, automatic spending cuts, a debt-ceiling vote, and a potential government shutdown. Some House conservatives were pressuring their leadership to take advantage of each of these fiscal-crisis choke points to gain concessions from Obama. Many were keenly interested in refusing to raise the debt ceiling, which would have risked a U.S. government default and perhaps precipitated an international economic crisis. Instead, we have arrived at mid-March without any of the worst consequences we feared in late 2012.